Sure, we could and should do better. For example, why doesn't any SUV come standard with built in car seats in the back for infants and children? I watched a ted talk from back in 2009 which asked this question but humans are irrational. They think clearly little Billy is safer if we spend $599 for a car seat.
If humans were immune to emotional manipulation then Google stock would crash because basically any advertising is emotional manipulation I think.
CBS quotes:
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is facing criticism for a tweet comparing the number of people killed in two mass shootings this weekend to those who died in other ways during the same amount of time. Some perceived the tweet as insensitive, as at least 29 people were left dead and dozens injured in the wake of the tragedies.
"In the past 48hrs, the USA horrifically lost 34 people to mass shootings," Tyson wrote Sunday afternoon. He then compared the "average" number of people who die in other ways across "any 48hrs."
"On average, across any 48hrs, we also lose… 500 to Medical errors, 300 to the Flu, 250 to Suicide, 200 to Car Accidents, 40 to Homicide via Handgun," he reasoned. "Often our emotions respond more to spectacle than to data."
Not just cars. A result of the emotional manipulation surrounding mass shootings has resulted in attempts to ban semi-automatic rifles. But rifles are used in about the same number of homicides each year than there are deaths from people falling off ladders.
Not every SUV buyer has children at car seat age. Those children will outgrow the need for car seats, at which point the built in car seats are wasting space that could be a regular seat.
No. There really isn't. The solution is simple and every racer knows what it is: teach skid control and proper use of the brakes. That's half the equation right there; the other half is eye technique which would be more difficult to become proficient in But for God's sakes At Least stop telling people to "watch where you going"--which is certain "death" when the car starts to slide, and instead start telling them to "look where they want the car to go".
2017 had more than 80 deaths, with the Las Vegas (58 deaths) and Sutherland Springs (26 deaths) exceeding that total for those two events. These events are becoming more common and deadlier, as shown on this Axios chart [0].
You're right to point out that there are many causes of death that are more common, but rapidly increasing and unpredictable causes of death are typically covered more in the media, for better or for worse. It's why the 738 Max 8 was all over the news, even though car crashes are a more frequent cause of death.
[0] https://www.axios.com/deadliest-mass-shootings-common-4211ba...
West Nile seems like a pretty unpredictable and scary cause of death. The media covers mass shootings more because reporters are overwhelmingly members of one party and gun control is a critical wedge issue in the culture war. West Nile isn’t.
*https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_th...
https://www.cdc.gov/westnile/statsmaps/preliminarymapsdata20...
> Since the virus has become widely established in the U.S., an average of 130 deaths a year occurred.